No “Like” is Fine : Resolving Self-Contradiction in Social Media Attitudes by Flipping Cognition-Emotion Dynamics

This study investigates how the users’ perceptions on like function in social media affect their attitudes toward the number of likes they receive from others. People conveniently believe that the number of likes is a significant measure of their online content quality and popularity. However, we take an ambivalent view that people do not settle their perceptions on the likes but change their like assessments according to circumstances. Specifically, we propose a model wherein emotional responses to the received likes may affect the value assessment of the likes. Our model shows how people resolve their internal contradiction on the value of the likes by flipping the traditional cognition-to-emotion mechanism to emotion-to-cognition mechanism. We validate the reversed dynamics between judgements and feelings using the data collected from 548 social media users. Results confirm that social media users’ attitudes toward likes is largely affected by their emotional responses to their received number of likes. The implications of this study explain social media users’ ambivalent attitudes toward likes by showing how they adjust their individual like valuation using their emotional responses.